Hand Shakers

"Hand Shakers" came up with a really originally and unique storyline.
Kids, who have to fight against other kids while holding hands, I've never heard of such a plot before.
I was exspecting an really enjoyable and interesting anime, but all I got was a beautiful animation with crappy CGI-effects. Don't get this wrong, I really like the colorful and splashing animation style, but the CGI style doesn't match the anime at all and makes me feel really uncomfortable.
This feeling lead me to the "poor" plot( of the first 4 episodes). I don't get, what this anime really try to be...the story continues achingly slow, the fight ... scenes were the only interesting thing so far and the other half of the story does't get my attention either. I have to say that the music did a great job as supporter and makes the action scenes really enjoyable to me.

The most important point to talk about are the character designs and development. To be honest; The Animation style of the main characters is beautiful, but the personalities itself are unappealing and "lame", there isn't any development so far, but I'm hoping for a worth seeing rise in the following episodes.

In the end "Hand Shakers" may become an enjoyable show, which focus lies on the beautiful animation. The CGI style is still a disrupting factor, but if you try to focalize on the animation it doesn't matter at all. Maybe it's not the best anime of the winter season 2017, but it is an interesting and unique show, which is of worth to get a peek on it.

This anime it is like a bollywood film it is entertaining because of the fighting scenes but that is all it have to offer . The story is just an excuse to create it so it isn't really good . Some times to camera angles can make you motion sick especially in the first an eight episode . For the art style you need like 2 episodes to get in to it so don't freak out if you think it looks strange in the beginning . The sound is good, but the characters are basic as possible . Whit all of this being said ... it is fun to watch and keeps you entertained .
It's a show that improve itself with every episode so the 9th episode is the best one even is if it's the last one when I am reviewing this .

Go Hands is known for the gorgeus anime "K" Project. Handsome boys, beautiful girls, cool supernatural power and engaging storyline. So what the different? Handshaker have every element "K" Project have. Wrong. Handshaker look like a cheap copycat of "K" Project. Yes they have great art and gorgeus character but the story is just to much, the premium is stupid and the CG, that first episode CG animation is just wrong in so many level. Its like an experiment project not a full anime show.

I know this sound like a rant but this show have so many potensial gone waste. With half season ... on going either they redeem it or let it blow Out. I don't want my beloved Go Hands let this show blow Out. I want this show known for its awful CG animation, I want this show become a good show they deserve.

HandShakers, is it the worst anime ever? Pretty much every review says yes, but when it comes to me, I like to see the good in things, but in this show, it's Really hard.

Hand Shakers is pretty much fate stay night but with generic anime character, the main character is this boy who looks like a grade school student and suddenly he is paired with this silent girl who has been comatose for a long time, so they have to fight all these other pairs and win so they can get a wish granted by God.The main hook of the story is so the ... fact that the two main characters can't let go of their hands or they die but this concept is thrown out the window.They fight using powers called “nimrods” but the only “nimrods” are the people who edited this mess, it's like the scenes got jumbled out of order and it's very weird.Also this has to be the worst thing they could do, but you expect to see people fight each other. You do get that for like one half of the episode and literally the next hour and a half is just nothing but pure BOREDOM.OMG I was begging for something to happen I mean come on.They do the regular fighting but after two or three of those, the show slows down so quickly I think I got skidmarks. The second to last episode is just a regurgitated fest of exposition and the ending begrudgingly was alright, but really see why people drop this show.It's really hard to get through.


Alrighty then, the hardest part to talk about is the animation.It was done by Gohands who are masters of chromatic coloring,see “K” for example.In this show though, you can tell where they were going for but it doesn't completely work. What actually shocked me was that the main director and art director both worked on K, so if they did work on this they were probably drunk as hell.The show tries make everything in the background animated on par to what's in the foreground,but it all looks slow and sloppy, some of the characters disappear before even leaving the fucking shot.And what really doesn't help at all is whoever directed the camera movements .There is this one scene where someone gets a close up but they are walking towards the camera so they just disappear and it's very weird.Also, the camera has the stupidity to try to follow the characters around when they fight and it made me so freaking dizzy.This one girl jumped like two blocks to hit this building and bounced off and just went back. WTF. The 3d can sometimes look good (if the show was released in 1999)but when it gets involved with 2d and the crackhead behind the camera, it can look very bad. Getting to the art, its fine but just so overwhelming, the hair looks so fake, and the background is just Bleeeeh. There are times when it zooms into the background but it's low in resolution.There is one part that looks decent. it's when the pair enter the fighting world and all the walls have cool looking designs that come to life and it looks kinda nice.That’s the nice looking flower you see in all of the trash in the dumpster.

Now the BEST part of this show hands down (seriously if you think anything about this show is better than the sound,there is something wrong with you.)I watched the dub, cuz Funimation is the best, and it's alright.The soundtrack sounds like a bunch of royalty free computer leisure music from the youtube editor.Not only that but i feel like if I bought the CD, it would be like 20 minutes long.There are like 5 songs on the soundtrack.But they don't sound too bad.The foley was alright. I The best song is Dust Trail for sure.It’s like a mash of ballroom dancing music with orchestra and its very good.I recommend to listen to it on your own.The opening was done by Oxt who did openings to Overlord Season 1 and 2.Those opening themes weren't my favorite,but after hearing “One Hand Message”I can see why they are so popular.It's super addicting and kinda unfair that they have to be put with messy eye gouging opening visuals.The ending is freaking beautiful too.


The characters are kinda clique but there are very weird turns taken with them.The main character and the emotionless girl are bland but I can't say the same for the others. Including a girl with Hypopituitarism, another girl who is actually a.pedophile, and also another girl who uses the powers of orgasms to break the ground around her.Despite that, the actual interaction with each pair is decent.One pair uses cards.Another pair can only use her nimrod after using hand sanitizer.The route they went with the two MCs wasn't bad,but the execution made the show BORING AS HELL.There was one episode moment that lasted 5 seconds, but it did a good job of showing interaction between the two characters but that was the only memorable thing in the whole episode.


I can see why everyone trashes this show ,but I don't hate it with a passion.It's just forgettable.The story is alright but done way better.The animation and art had potential but it was just too overwhelming and lazily put together.The soundtrack is not bad but it sounds like stock music.And I can appreciate the personalities of each pair but the MC and the girl interaction was just so freaking boring I was tearing up from yawning all the time.This show is pretty freaking bad, but people are just overreacting.People who say this is the worst anime ever probably haven't seen all the other trash that anime has to offer.

Overall-5
I feel sorry for Gohands right now....

First things first. My "reviews" system is explained on a blog entry. Which can be found through my profile.
------

✦Story
To keep it short. I did enjoy the concept and a lot of ideas in this Anime. The bonds, past and general lives that were presented here were quite conflicted that made the story fairly emotional.

What I did not enjoy. I felt that the story was way too fast pace and another thing I disliked that the story constantly built us a fairly interesting world, powers and concept but it kept growing it's sense of mystery. Building sense of mystery in 12 episodes Anime is a serious ... punch in your face. It's one of those Anime that basically tell you to read the source material. As Anime simply fast quick paced intro to the world.

Another thing I will have to mention about each section of this review is the general mixed feelings I got from this series. As for story, I felt it had lot of good, but at the same time I cannot really praise it as much as I would like to. I simply cannot explain, but the emotion it gave me in general was "kinda good, but not quite" . Or to put it simply, mixed feelings is the cause of my inability to give it more credit/praise score-wise.

✦Art & Sound
Well, studio behind this is same as Anime "K", which means we have very unique, different, colorful and alive art & animation. Even if wasn't as impressive as in Anime just mentioned. It was still highly enjoyable. Action and some camera pans felt very awkward at times, and low framerate didn't make it any better. And another issue regarding Art would be that faced did feel quite "derp" now and then.

Aside that I gotta add I did love the fashion in this Anime. Very fancy clothes and FMC had some extremely fancy and pretty underwear.
Fanservice to be honest felt non-existent aside oppai-chan, which had some extreme jiggles. Felt odd but artsy, didn't feel anything else.

Music was funky, active and generally had presence and was quite "stylish". In this particular case I mean that it did fit well with Anime visual style. Nevertheless I found it superb.

And yes, again with Art I had some mixed feelings as most of it felt really good, whilst some things made it very odd.

✦Character
This Anime was way too short... essentially we got episodic Anime with different pair every episode.
But to put it plainly, hand shakers are essentially people with painful past thus developed into sad, empty and pitiful present selves. And "hand shakers" essentially gives characters hope to gain their dreams that simply were in emotional way quite ghastly? I don't really want to mention characters too much as there were plenty of them and we were given little of time to know them. So anything real would be spoiler.

But I have to add, that once again characters concept was fairly nice. Very dark and sad, but nice. All of the characters had their issues in life and essentially got scarred or damaged. Thus their hunt towards the "god" to achieve their dreams. While on the other hand, everything progressed too fast in this Anime that gave me difficulty to truly grow into characters or fully understand them. Essentially it gave you little tease to feel for the character, but by the time you will actually achieve that "feel", it was all over. As felt I felt characters were fairly ironic as well.

To sum it up, odd bunch of characters that I personally did enjoy as whole, BUT at the same time I would loved to know about them a fairly large portion more of. But eh "go read the novel", I guess.......

✦Enjoyment & Overall
Did mention most things in previous sections, but I can add that it was probably the most mixed feelings Anime I've watched in a very long while. As lot of things I loved about this Anime. Lot were sad, painful and probably even relatable, whereas at the same time I just feel I wasn't give enough time to feel those feelings as intended. Same with growing into characters. And that dark and cruel sense of mystery this Anime oozed off, was simply bullying at this point. There were simply so many things they explained, teased about, but simply didn't give us enough.

Average of this review probably would be higher than 6. But this is one of these odd little unpolished gems that this time around, simply won't get that praise from me just because I love Anime in general.

To wrap it up, it's unique Anime but suffers from excessive fast pacing and various "feeling vibe" issues, that might you think this Anime is bad or very good. But the truth is, it's middle line that has been approached and conveyed a tad bit incorrectly.

Moral of the story.
This Anime is weird....I cannot explain why.. it just is weird. Not even sure whenever in bad or good way...that is as well weird.
Weird. Period.

The battle tournament/ survival game genre is something that always catches my interest due to it's massive potential. It's a quick and sure-fire way to have epic battles, dynamic characters and a thrilling ride of suspense. Even an average writer could make a good survival story. A terrible writer, however, can only produce garbage. Hand shakers could very well be the worst anime to Grace this genre.

Let's get straight to the elephant in the room: the art and animation. I don't understand how Gohands( what is it with Japan and weird names?) Could produce something as beautiful as k project then make this dumpster fire. ... The show tried so hard to be advant garde by combining 2d and 3d animation but the director hadn't the slightest clue what to do. The CG is painfully poorly rendered to the point there are ps2 games with better graphics There's also the poorly handled camera that just spins around without any real meaning. I'm guessing the director was going for a cinematic feel but it felt like the show was made by a child playing with his phone. Viewers are bombarded with oversaturated rainbow vomit colors you can find on a bad Wattpad faction cover. More colors don't mean better art If there's no rhyme or reason put into it. Some people even claimed to have gotten nauseous from these pathetic visuals. I'll admit the actual character designs were good and I liked the outfit worn by the mc. His jacket is chic and looks good enough to be sold in fashion retails.

The soundtrack was completely dull. Not a single song stuck out to me and I forgot every piece of music as soon as it ended. I understand not every anime can get that Iwasaki Taku or Hiroyuki Sawano soundtrack but at least have something noteworthy in the audio-visual department to distract viewers from the clusterf*ck story. I liked the voice acting in the English dub and I would've never watched this boring show with subtitles so that's one positive I guess.

Time to finally get to the real meat of the show. Or maybe it's vegan meat cause it's completely bland boring and a utter waste of time.

( Cue dramatic narration in the voice of Optimus Prime)
Fierce opponents from all across Japan battle to enlist in a legendary tournament to own the right to talk to God. The battles are daunting and survival is not guaranteed. Only one boy and his basic bitch girlfriend may come out supreme.
( End credits)
And that's the entire show in one paragraph. Episodes either have bland mc and basic bitch go on a date or have them battling other fighters. Let's take a quick look at the setup. Why are the weapons here called nimrods? I understand the old definition means mighty Hunter( I researched it so the show indirectly taught me a new meaning) most people would immediately think of an idiot. What's also idiotic is why the area these teens fight in is called a ziggurat. It's another biblical term that refers to a temple. These people are never in a temple so calling an empty space a ziggurat is stupid and pretentious. I just know the writers thought they were being clever with the naming. Anime has this weird fascination with using religious terms simply to look cool without any thought put into it.

There isn't a lot to say about the story since this show is as superficial as it gets. It's utterly cluttered with archetypes and badly animated fights. Let's make a list of the cliches shall we

• Emotionless quiet girl
• quirky scientist
• Laid back parents who don't question the obvious
• sadist and masochist duo
• pop idol
• a loli who's actually an adult
There's more but you get the point. The dynamic between the characters felt drier than the devil's ass. Tazuna wants to protect hiyori cause she looks like his dead sister and hiyori wants......??????? Other contestants include a brocon sister who wants to be by her brother's side forever, a pop idol who wants to remain in fame and a businesswoman who wants to be taken seriously. With motives and personalities so boring, it's hard to care who wins and losses.

What's worse is that the entire tournament was for nothing. Tazuma wins but he never talked to God. Thanks for cementing your complete lack of skill dear writers. we never get to find out anything about this god and the show ends.

I don't recommend watching hand shakers. You might have fun laughing at how bad it is but the atrocious visuals and lackluster cast make it hard to sit through.

Warning possible Spoilers:

After finishing Hand Shakers I'm surprised that this has a pretty low score on MAL because honestly I thought it wasn't too bad sure it's not the best, but it is most certainly not the worst.

Reading the description the story gave me a Future Diary vibe and it actually was in some ways similar to it just without the gore, killing and insane Yandere, it's about people who would become hand shakers and defeat all the other hand shakers so they could have a chance to face God and either fight him or be granted a wish sound familiar yet and the more ... the story progressed it got more interesting overtime finding out how everything worked, this show could also have put in the Romance and Comedy tags because there is some of that in here.

The characters were actually pretty interesting it was nice seeing the relationship develop between Tazuna and Koyuri as they got more experienced over time, the other hand shakers were mostly interesting because their wishes were actually more good than evil so you kinda feel bad for them when they get defeated plus they didn't act like assholes towards the MC's after they were defeated and actually became friends with them which was an interesting twist for once instead of seeking revenge.

The Artstyle is pretty much what grabbed my attention, it was very colourful and reminded me of No Game No Life, but a lot more shiny it was interesting seeing this style since this was probably a first for me with this type.

The action was quick, but satisfying I've never seen a Gear sword before so that was new for me and the powers the other hand shakers had were also interesting.

Hand Shakers is actually a decent anime, if you've seen future diary or like action animes then this might be a decent watch for you, it depends really on your taste, but I mostly enjoyed it

Hand Shakers, the perfect "Mediocre" anime.

For starters, the "Story" receives a five for simple reasons. It's pretty damn basic. There's a story, but it's not a good one. There is development in the story, but they're not interesting. There are twists, but they come abruptly and awkwardly. I can truly describe this anime's plot in such a heartbeat, it's almost sad. "Wattpad Middle-schooler fan-fic." Doesn't ring a bell? Good for you. Essentially, I'm suggesting that the setting of the story, the plot elements, the key details, the premise of the show, etc. are all near immature, and bland, lacking in originality and creativity. The most ... "unique" aspect of the story is the fact that Hand Shakers ... must hold hands.

Art and Sound. Both receive five for similar reasons. The one thing that both aspects have in common would be the fact that, for at the minimum, half the show is arguably a 1-3 rating. There's a lot of clunky animation, awkward sound effects, weird art choices, elevator music, etc. Yet that isn't the worst of it. One of the more popular complaints I've heard of is the overwhelming cluster of sound effects and special effects. The first episode is guaranteed to give you a headache, and while the sound effects seem alright at first, they tend to be constant and overwhelming at times.
So why the five? Well, I personally believe there a few, while minimal, there are few scenes and soundtrack choices that deserve a higher rating. There are rather nice-looking backgrounds, not every song sounds like royalty-free music, sometimes the sound effects help the immersion unlike the special effects, and occasionally the animation is rather impressive. It's these sparks of effort that make a lower score feel criminal.

The character rating being a five is a little tough to settle on. I want to like the characters, but there's not even a chance as any potential in these characters is absolutely ruined by the poor dialogue. Scenes that are supposed to be comedic sometimes feel forced or "cringe" and half the time, the dialogue just feels so robotic and off-setting. One of my personal complaints has to do with a specific character that I will not name for spoiler protection, becoming rather talkative, which is fine, but this influenced and changed how I viewed them as a character, how they interacted with the other characters, and overall just made the character different. I didn't like the change. There are some decent side characters, usually coming in as duos since y'know, Hand Shakers are paired. I specifically enjoyed the business-related characters (you'll understand if you watch) but I do understand the common complaint that all the characters are boring, cliched, and lack creativity, a common trend in all aspects of this show.

Lastly, I've said enough to explain why I rated "Enjoyment" as five. In all due respect, I didn't hate it, I just didn't find it to be good. I watched it, said "yeah that works I guess" and moved on with my day. There is a sequel, perhaps I'll get to it, but for now, I don't feel like wasting the effort on a show I know isn't worth it.

Recommendation:

Not worth the headache, nor the disappointment. If you like trash anime, by all means, take Hand Shakers for a spin but, if you expect an anime similar to Assassin's Pride (absolutely awful but I loved it) you will not receive it.